Total income for the third quarter rose to Rs 3,786.68 crore from Rs 3,505.25 crore in the year ago period.

Attributing the decline in net profit to provision of Rs 40 crore towards pension corpus option given to VRS optees, bank's Chairman and MD T M Bhasin told reporters here that the bank has made another provision of Rs 15 crore during November and December towards wage revision of employees and officers.

He said in the third quarter ending last year, the bank had two exceptional income items comprising reversal of provision amounting to Rs 52 crore towards deferred tax liability and one time Rs 51 crore income from foreign exchange portfolio.

To a query on RBI cutting its key interest rates by 0.25 percent and releasing Rs 18,000 crore additional liquidity into the system, Bhasin said: "Rs 130 crore amount of funds is what has been released (by Reserve Bank to us). It will generate an additional income of 33 percent".

"We have decided to pass on the advantage (to our customers) and we have decided to reduce the base rate to 10.20 percent from February 9, by 30 basis points (0.30 percent) from the present 10.50 percent," he said.

Detailing about the bank's performance, he said the total business in December 31, 2012 rose to Rs 2,35,060 crore from Rs 2,07,014 crore registered in December 2011.

Total deposits grew to Rs 1,35,077 crore as compared to Rs 1,18,970 crore in the year-ago period.

The CASA (current account savings account) deposits improved to Rs 38,268 crore in December 2012 from Rs 35,919 crore in December 2011.

During the nine month period ending December 31, 2012, the bank made NPA recovery of Rs 442 crore in addition to upgradation of NPAs to standard accounts to the tune of Rs 360 crore.

Till December 31, 2012 the bank's exposure to educational loan portfolio was Rs 3,648.17 crore and in the third quarter the bank disbursed Rs 403.52 crore as educational loan to 661,96 students.

To a query on implementing the Cash Transfer Scheme, launched by Union Government from January one, 2013, he said the bank has implemented it in Puducherry and Chittoor.

"All (our) banks have been linked into the Aadhaar scheme. It is totally glitchless and successfully implemented. Even in Chittoor it has been 100 percent successful", he said, adding, the bank has baout 15,000 beneficiaries in Puducherry while one lakh in Chittoor district.